Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 171, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 July 1916 — CONTROLLED BY SOUND WAVE [ARTICLE]

CONTROLLED BY SOUND WAVE

Engineer Has New Idea for Controlling the Death-Dealing Devices Employed in Modern Warfare. Lovers of opera, or otherwise, who have had the pleasure, or otherwise, of hearing some of the most modern music, have come to realize that it has other attributes than that of soothing the savage breast. But to blow up a battleship by means of a Strauss dissonance or a Wagner Overture, to nip off prowling submarines with a Verdi cadenza, or to make a mine-strewn harbor safe for your own ships with the tender notes of a Schubert lullaby seems another matter.

Expressed somewhat after the fashion of vers libre, that is more or less the results that are expected from an Invention demonstrated to the writer. Lieut. Stiles M. Decker of the Pacific coast artillery is the inventor of a device that he believes will go a long way toward revolutionizing our coast defense. Patents have been applied for and preliminary tests have shown conclusively, it is said, that control of underwater mines may be successfully maintained through sound waves for firing, testing or rendering the mines neutral. It is believed to be the first time that the energy of sound has been used as a means of controlling; the action of a source of energy. The fact that mines have to be either controlled from the shore or by means of wires or else planted loose so that they will explode on contact has long been a source both of expense and trouble, according to Lieutenant Decker. The cable to the mines, when this is used, is very expensive and becomes useless in the course of a few years. Also it is not a very difficult matter under certain conditions for it to be destroyed by .an enemy, thus rendering the mines useless. The mines that are simply planted with no further means of control may become as dangerous to the ships of this country as they are to those of an enemy. If there could be some means of controlling them from the land without the necessity of any actual physical connection the advantages are so apparent that they need no enumeration. After considering a number of possible solutions Lieutenant Decker conceived the idea of using sound waves, which, as is well known, can be carried under water. With this as a working basis he has built up his theory of making a mine that will be controlled by a series of musical notes.